The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report seeks to understand the current and future impact of key disruptions on employment levels, skill sets and recruitment patterns in different industries and countries. It does so by asking the talent and strategy executives of today’s largest employers to imagine how jobs in their industry will change up to the year 2020. Here are our findings:

Technological disruption is interacting with socio-economic, geopolitical and demographic factors to create a perfect storm in labour markets in the next five years. Developments in previously disjointed fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and genetics and biotechnology are all building on and amplifying one another. Concurrent to this technological revolution are a set of broader socio-economic, geopolitical and demographic developments, with nearly equivalent impact to the technological factors.

Jobs gains in the next five years will not be enough to offset expected losses, meaning we have a difficult transition ahead. Current trends could lead to a net employment impact of more than 5.1 million jobs lost to disruptive labour market changes over the period 2015-2020, with a total loss of 7.1 million jobs – two-thirds of which are concentrated in routine white collar office functions, such as office and administrative roles – and a total gain of 2 million jobs, in computer and mathematical, and architecture and engineering related fields. Manufacturing and production roles are also expected to see a further bottoming out but are also anticipated to have relatively good potential for upskilling, redeployment and productivity enhancement through technology rather than pure substitution. Read More…